


The Witch Hunt

by xel



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Witch Mercy, enchanted armor pharah, halloween fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-12
Updated: 2018-10-12
Packaged: 2019-07-29 20:32:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16271807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xel/pseuds/xel
Summary: Fareeha is the innocent victim of a witch hunt; Angela makes a decision in the aftermath of the trial.





	The Witch Hunt

**Author's Note:**

> This is pretty short, but it gave me a lot of ideas ... so I may add a prequel and some additions to this. Happy spoopy month~

“It’s just skin,” Angela says, running her hand over the cold metal of the armor Fareeha now possesses, bodiless; just a soul in a thing, devoid of agency.

 

Angela knows, hates herself, her selfishness, but does not draw away, does not want to lose what is left of her humanity. She hopes her heart is in the right place; that what she has done and what she has become are things that Fareeha will forgive. “It doesn’t matter,” Angela says.

 

In the silence, there is not even breath to cut the stagnant air.

 

“I feel … hollow,” Fareeha responds after a time, her voice seems to originate from nowhere, and carries with it the peculiar, airy flit of wind blowing heavy on a window in a rainstorm. “I want to spend an eternity with you,” the armor is so still it seems almost inanimate, “but I am not sure I can even say that I am here like this.” And now the armor moves. The helmet turns, the metal scrapes against itself unpleasantly. 

 

Fareeha is a ghost of who she was alive; the strong, defiant woman Angela had been enthralled with is present, and simultaneously gone - buried deep in the ground, in an iron tomb; heart cut, head severed, the entirety of the village Fareeha had spent so much of her life protecting convinced of her demonic ways.  _ A witch _ , they had called her, sneering and throwing rocks, and cursing … ultimately murdering.

 

It is Angela’s fault.

 

Those paranoid heathens, so far from the gods they spouted hatred behind, hungry for blood, had taken Fareeha’s heart because Angela had asked for it, had been gifted it with no malice, no ulterior motives.

 

Angela is the witch. 

 

Fareeha is just a woman - was just a woman - indifferent to the power of magic, but in love with Angela all the same. 

 

Angela looks hard at the suit of armor. She rests her hand on the grate of the steel helmet; ethereal blue dust floats between the cracks and does not, but seems to, tie the pieces of the suit together like iridescent muscle tissue. Fareeha is beautiful like this, in a way so different than how she had been alive; so foreign and unfamiliar, and yet achingly familiar. 

 

“I don’t want to give you back,” Angela confesses. 

 

The cobwebbed rooms of her lonely castle carry a draft which lasts through fall, through winter, which carries on in Angela’s heart and makes a mockery of her circumstances. The corridors seem to whisper and the balconies collect ravens, as outcasted and miserable as her. Angela knows, she  _ knows _ she should not have resurrected Fareeha’s spirit; should not have bound it to the armor - Angela’s knows it is a violation of trust. She will undo it, if she is asked, and it will rip every bit of her to pieces as she does (she’s prepared for this; prepared to never speak of it). 

 

“I don’t want to go back,” Fareeha replies.

 

Angela is so relieved by the response she half thinks she may sob. The arms of the armor wrap around Angela and it is cold at first, but seems to radiate heat, after a time, from no discernible source.

 

Maybe it is the blue dust, maybe it is Angela imagination.

 

“So you will give it a try?” Angela asks.

 

“Yes,” says Fareeha, the arm raises and pushes the brim of Angela’s hat out of her eyes so that Angela is staring into the glow of a slot where eyes could be, but aren’t. “For you.” 

 

Still, the hollow set of armor is anything but and Angela is so relieved to hear Fareeha’s voice, nothing else particularly matters at the moment.

 

“I would much rather spend the rest of whatever life I have by your side, than in the cold ground of a necropolis.” Fareeha says, the airy, windy voice lifts at the end in a humored way. Angela grins, watery without meaning it to be.

 

“With such an alluring alternative, I’m glad you chose me,” She laughs, kissing the metal helmet, and leaving a red lip stain when she pulls away.

 

“The choice was a hard one,” Fareeha says, but her tone suggests that it really was not. 

 

Angela clings to Fareeha’s armor and grins foolishly to herself. 

 

“Thank you,” she says. 

 

“There is nothing to thank,” Fareeha tells her. 


End file.
